Boat Building Forum

I am going to leave the colons in Peter's posts as a quote so I can respond to this point-by-point, and I'm only going to get into points where I can specifically refute his claims with photos, video, or screen-caps of emails that were sent. No "two sides to every story." One person is not being honest or is seriously mis-remembering what happened.

: Well I just heard about this and the drawings I received from Rob
: Mack`s are indeed off. My drawings are the original in 2002.
: Station /10 &11 are not symetrical in the drawings. I make my
: templates from original half masters which I then use as a
: template

When I purchased replacement forms, because yours could not be aligned to create a fair hull, the every form created by CNC from Newfound Woodworks fit the plans PERFECTLY. The plans were not asymmetrical, your forms are. The replacement forms also lined up to create a fair hull. I'll send you a picture of the completed boat when it's done.

: Rob Mack`s had
: corrected this in the past
: but never informed me of the change. So naturally my number 10 &11
: forms would not match.

As Peter from Classic Boat Kits points out, I am a novice builder, and I hadn't yet set up the forms to see if they could be made fair. I just saw some were visibly asymmetrical to the naked eye, so I started laying them on the plans and saw many of them were off. After Peter claimed the changes to the plans were the problem, I contacted Rob to see if what Peter was saying was in fact true, that the Firestar design or plans had been modified. Here was Rob's response:

"No, there has not been any modifications. Who was the kit maker you worked with?"

: Stephen was just looking for an excuse to get his money back.

I asked for *replacements*, or a refund only if you weren't willing/able to correct your templates (screen cap of my email available). But if I were just looking for my money back, why then, would I spend even more money on new forms from Newfound once I'd exhausted all possible resolutions with you? Here's an early photo of the replacement forms lining up nicely during setup (see video below to see they're clearly not the ones from CBK):
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6004/5965809146_47fefb431d.jpg

: The new drawings that Stephen had
: received were corrected but he did receive perfectly symetrical
: forms and I would like to add that these were the only two forms
: in dispute.

For those of you who don't know who to believe, I hope this will clear things up. I took video of most of the forms when I was trying to work out with Bill Hamm who to believe. Some of them have just been recently uploaded today, but you will see from the dates on others that I uploaded them last year when trying to reach a resolution with Peter. Here are some examples across the boat.

: So I will be posting a few photos as proof on my site when I start making changes.

Bear in mind that Peter offered me this same proof, and then stopped responding to me when I actually asked him to send it. I still have the emails and will be happy to post screen-caps.

I can't begin to tell you all how frustrating an ordeal this was. These guys first claimed the plans were "warped," then that Rob changed the design, everything except offering to fix the problem. I even tried to align the forms anyway ("Maybe Bill and Rob are wrong..."), and it was obviously not possible. I bought replacement CNC forms from Newfound Woodworks, they fit the plans perfectly, and they aligned perfectly. I returned the bad forms to Classic Boat Kits (shipment to Canada at my own cost), and Classic Boat Kits rejected the package.

Honestly, I had chalked this up to me getting ripped off, and that it wasn't worth going to the effort of letting more people know about this. But now I'm angry.

Peter, I am happy to discuss this privately if you are interested in coming to a resolution. You have my email address. Or we can keep discussing it here.